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700 km drive in my 2021 Tata Safari: Initial impressions

19th August 2021, 16:40 by Rahul Nagaraj

The car behaved very well on all types of road conditions, slopes, inclines etc. and never felt underpowered.

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Last week, I completed ~700 KMs trip on Pune-Aurangabad-Pune route with my Safari and below are the observations. So far we had short trips, but this was the first time we managed to cover such a long distance. My wife and I shared the drive. The weather for all the 3 days in Aurangabad was awesome and the visit to the Ellora caves and Aurangabad caves was memorable as the hills around the caves were like green velvet all around.

Coming back to Safari:

What we liked most about the drive:

The space inside is like business class for 4 people traveling. Everyone (except driver of course) can leverage the flexible seating arrangement to stretch legs and make oneself super comfortable. Kids loved the recline and seat fold options to sit like Maharaja! The panoramic sunroof adds to the luxury feeling and makes the cabin airy.
The third row is usable for someone of my height (172 cm) and of course for kids. I spent couple of hours in the third row while my wife was driving and even with luggage on one of the seats folded, I was comfortable. I had good amount of leg room with second row positioned in the middle.
The drive was smooth & light. The NVH was very well controlled and with Music on hardly any outside noise entered the cabin. Pleasant weather, nice roads and lush greenery all around, made the drive enjoyable, both by the driver as well the co-passengers. Once behind the wheel neither my wife nor I was keen to give up the driver seat! All the three driving modes offered fun during the drive in the respective road conditions. For instance the Eco/City modes were butter smooth in the city whereas Sports mode gave the adrenaline rush and to urge to floor the accelerator. Surprisingly the sports mode on highway gave more mileage than City/Eco mode. I got approximate mileage of ~13.5 Km/l for the round trip.
The car behaved very well on all types of road conditions, slopes, inclines etc. and never felt underpowered. The ride quality was compliant and the bad roads didn't bother much. The car didn't flatten the bad roads however was not uncomfortable either. Also, all the auto features (Auto box, Auto wipers, Auto Headlamps, Auto-hold) worked like charm making the drive hassle free and didn't feel tiring even after continuous driving for long hours.
The music system is fantastic, so much so that we felt something was missing when we were not playing any songs for a brief period of time.
Many people on route check out the vehicle and enquired about the variant details, mileage, features etc.

What could have been better:

Sitting in the third row, I could feel more wind noise as compared to first and second row. Not sure if there are any door/rubber settings which needs to be adjusted.
The Android Auto was unreliable. At times, the phone connected to AA in a jiffy where as other times, it simply refused to activate AA. Again, don't know whether it was to do with my phone, cable or the unit itself. I got the software updated to latest version, and now it is working fine.
The third row seats don't fold completely F-L-A-T. There is a slight incline (may be 5-7 degrees). This doesn't cause issue most of the times, its just that the luggage may slide behind if the car goes with high speed on broken roads so need to organize it better.
The sub-woofer is located on the rear LHS of the third row. When playing music with bass at high level, the passenger in the third row may ask to reduce the volume as it can get slight uncomfortable due to the sub-woofer sound. This will be the case especially when the car is at low speeds and the music volume is high.
The AC cooling in the 2nd row was not as effective as that of 1st row or 3rd row. Had the keep the blower at level 2 to cool the 2nd row on a sunny day.

Attaching some pictures. Short De-tour near Aurangabad Caves